The Notes/Domino 8.5 public beta is now available. The forum with all the details (download, release notes, etc.) is at http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf

I and the rest of the design team monitor that forum, and thus, most of the discussoin will move there; this blog might not be that active for a bit because all the action is taking place over on the feedback forum.

We are planning on doing some usability testing with external users. We have plans to go to customer sites to do usability testing of Notes 8.5, using our "Renovations on the road" approach that Betsy Comstock and the user studies team came up with. As I am sure you all know, Renovations is where Samantha, Ted and Betty work.

We take Renovations on the road by traveling to the customer site, where they have reserved offices or conference rooms for us, and we set up the server (we named it "the big bad wolf") and 3 clients (who are of course named Piggy1, 2 and 3). Then real end users at the customer site come and participate in usability tests. The mail, calendar and contacts are all to do with Renovations topics.

Of course, the ideal thing is to have users install the betas and use it on their own mail, but you admins are very protective of your end users and you don't usually let them install things like "public beta 1" :) so for business end users, we have found that "Renovations on the road" is the next most useful approach.

The Notes 8.5 public beta 1 is at the moment planned to be available to you around 9 am eastern time Friday morning.

This is not a guarantee, just a heads up, so that those ofyou in, oh, say, Australia, can stay up late and keep pushing the refresh key on your browser so that you can win a beer from your geek mates for being the first one to download it... that kind of thing.

The "Central Triage" meetings have been going on regularly for quite some time now. That is, each area has local triage meetings to triage bugs, and then we we get close to things like public beta, we move to a central triage, where representatives come together .

We are right now talking about one team (the "single log on"initiative) who managed to get thru this central triage beta process so far without any bugs! Their manager is checking into that to confirm it-- would be cool, and fun to reward them. Of course, then the challendge would be for you beta testers to find as many single log on bugs as possible :)

Speaking of the public beta, it should be soon. We take every day (and every bug) as it comes. I am hoping that it will be in time for DNUG and ILUG next week, , because then not only can I demo it, but you can fiddle with it as well.

Last year I had the privilege of presenting at both. This year, ILUG asked first, so I'm going to ILUG.

DNUG speakers include Kevin Cavanaugh, Brent Peters and Bob Picciano.

ILUG speakers include Alan Lepofsky, Ed Brill, Myself and a few other hard-working and fun-loving IBMers. Notice how ILUG got all the good IBM bloggers :)

ILUG is free, and I think there are a few spots left, so hurry on over to their website to register.

ILUG is a lot more relaxed than Lotusphere, where we are not allowed to do things like toss out give-aways into the audience during our talks. ILUG has to such restrictions, and in fact, in some sessions they hand out beer when you walk in the door! While I do not plan to give out beer, I do plan to bring several give-aways to bestow upon the Lotus faithful. This might be in the form of a "pop-quiz" about what is coming in Notes 8.5. The desgn team and I have posted quite a bit of what is coming in Notes 8.5 to this blog, so read our former posts to prepare (hint: It also never hurts to know the names and job roles of our design personas, especially new newer ones, like Ida, Fred, Raj, Michaela and others...)

Our friend and colleague, Cynthia Ice, passed away earlier this week.She was an accessibility expert and tester-- a tireless advocate foraccessibility for Lotus Notes and other products, starting with Notes 5I believe.

Every blind user of Lotus products, and every salesperson who has towork with accounts that require accessibility, owe Cynthia Ice a greatdebt. Her work is described a bit in the followingarticle in USA Today.

Her life had great purpose-- to make software usable for people withdisabilities. Please help her to continue to accomplish her purpose byfixing an accessibility bug in her honor.All you Notes app devs around the world -- if all your databasesare 100% accessible, that's great. But chances are, they are not. So take a few minutes to make sure that all your menu items havemnemonics (underlined access keys), or that a screen reader reads yourform in the proper order.

IBM developers -- take a look at your spr queues and see if you haveany accessibility ones, and see if you can find some extra time to fixone -- for Cynthia.[Read More]

After Notes 8 was released, we began hearing that users occasionallydidn’t notice important items (like meeting invitations) in their Inbox.

But why?Was itbecause the icons were too small?Was itbecause they were too similar to each other?Or could we improve scanning by removing icons for mail messages thathad already been read?To find out, weconducted a timed experiment: 24participants found target items on 72 Inbox screens that differed from eachother in the icon size, distinctiveness, and whether or not icons were includedfor read messages.We also asked theseparticipants and several other groups of customers which designs theypreferred.

Results showed that we could greatly improve scanning bymaking the icons more distinctive from each other.Making the icons bigger (within ourconstraints) didn’t help.Usersstrongly preferred eliminating the icons for already-read mail messages.

So, in Notes 8.5 you will see an Inbox that’s easier toscan, with 10 improved icons for mail message types. The biggest changes are removing the icon forread mail and using a blue star for unread mail.We also adjusted meeting workflow items sothat the most time-dependent ones (e.g., new invitation, reschedules,cancellations) stand out and those that are not so time-dependant (e.g., aninvitee has accepted your meeting) are subtler.No other changes were made to the icon grid.

Icons are a very tricky, visible part of the userexperience, so Denise Shaw, our visual designer, drew and redrew them moretimes than she can count until we were all satisfied.Now those of us using the new icons find thatwe need a new excuse for missing meetings!

Workspace, workspace, is everything they sayAnd nothing that I'd rather seeWhere else can you stack a half a million squaresAll at a quarter to threeThen arrange the icons, ooh, those lovely chicklets,Shows it's got a lot of styleBut it's still that great old rep-li-cationThat really really drives em wild!

They say the Heart of Lotus Notes is still beating.And from what I've seen, I believe em.Now, old Redmond says we're barely breathingBut the heart of Lotus Notes, the heart of Lotus Notes is still beating!

E-mail, IM, and the new ContactsAre something everyone one should useNew side-bar and the new ver-ti-cal viewAre all things you should cho-oseThen you open new apps.Those great new comp appsShows that Notes has a lot of flashBut it's still that great old rep-lic-ationThat lets us kick old Outlook in the ***!

They say the Heart of Lotus Notes is still beating.And from what I've seen, I believe em.Now, old Redmond says we're barely breathingBut the heart of Lotus Notes, the heart of Lotus Notes is still beating!

(Tarcio!) <sax riff>

Big Banks, small ones too, pharm-a-ceut-i-cals, yeah, Finance, and Ed-u-cationHewitt, Turtle, Lotus911uhn, Penumbra, all the busi-ness part-ners,Everywhere there's users, real live users, folks with a million stylesBut it's still that great old rep-li-cationThat really really drives em Wild!

They say the Heart of Lotus Notes is still beating.And from what I've seen, I believe em.Now, old Redmond says we're barely breathingBut the heart of Lotus Notes, the heart of Lotus Notes is still beating!

(1st verse)We're in to replication Wikis and data stores I feel a premonitionThese apps are gonna take me far We've got comp applicationsNew views and mail re-callSpreadsheets and presentationsYou're gonna love it all

You can build the perfect form Or design apps to your fameOur brand new editors will help youOptimize your gameLife will never be the same!

One of our internal teams (LanguageWare-- they provide the spellchecker and some stuff for Live Text, and other stuff) is going to betaking a full week out to focus entirely on "entity extractiondevelopment" which is geekspeak for "recognizing what a word is"-- "Hannover" being a city OR a development project, things likethat. So if you have some entities which you really would like tosee included please let us know.

By entities we mean any named thing in text, like projects,technologies, people, times, companies, organizations, places,addresses, legal jargon, ... etc.. this is your chance to suggestsomething a bit more off the wall, or even very mainstream and domainspecific.

Here are some things I know Samantha would want to be automatically identified:

Dates/Times and roles (due date, sent date, event date, etc.)

Relative Dates/Times: "today", "tomorrow", "noon next Tuesday", etc.

Scheduled calendar events (meetings, conferences, etc.)

Aggregate names, from lists supplied by other components, like Projects, Activities, etc.

Information place names, like QuickPlace, Quickr

Community names from Connections, etc.

Geographical place names

Addresses

Patent numbers and patent publication numbers

Publication names (print or electronic)

Publication article titles

Which of these are most important, or what else, or what else ismore important for you and the Samanthas, Teds and Bettys of the world?